The Northeast seems to be doing better than the rest of the country, but it's still not zero risk. The first major breakthrough outbreaks were in the Northeast

The Northeast seems to be doing better than the rest of the country, but it's still not zero risk. The first major breakthrough outbreaks were in the Northeast, and we're definitely not 100% vaccinated up here. (There isn't even a vaccine that's approved for 100% of the population!) Just looking out my window in Brooklyn, people in my neighborhood walk around outside with masks on. I gave that up a couple months ago, but I definitely feel like I'm on the losing side of that convention and people are probably judging me. (I still wear a mask indoors, of course, including in the common areas of my apartment building. The risk of transmission outdoors seems pretty low to me.) I think it's very dangerous to point fingers and say "haha, that can't happen to us". In the early days of the pandemic, that's what people said about New York. And they were right for several months -- that first wave that hit New York hard barely registered across the country. But now, those people are getting hit. COVID is spreading, and there is nothing stopping another variant -- perhaps one that doesn't care about vaccines at all, or one that kills kids. Now is not the time to glibly celebrate victory, or point the finger and laugh "look at how much worse those other states are than us". 600,000 Americans are dead from this pandemic, and the end is not in sight.